The premise goes like this. It’s important to get rare and valuable skills, early in your career. As you gain expertise, you start to see the adjacent possibilities – the forest for the trees. You gain career capital. As a craftsman, you are afforded more control over your work, environment, compensation etc. . . Basically, you’re kinda awesome. Research shows that many people get more passionate as they gain mastery. Work . . . Mastery . . . Passion.
As a corollary, Mark Cuban calls this “Don’t follow your passion, follow your work.”
Passion is fairly rare, and takes time to develop
Newport argues that passion is actually quite rare. More often than not, what people might consider as a passion, is actually an interest / hobby / whim. It’s like puppy-love passion. passion spelled with a “lower-case p”.
Don’t get fooled into the overly simple career LEGO formula of snapping together the two parts: 1) what’s my passion? 2) where’s that job which maps to that passion? Many potential – not great – assumptions:
- We know what we want (now and later in life); remember, life’s a long time
- We have enough passion / interest / fire to grind out the difficult months/years
- This will make money, or enough to help you keep going
- This combination of work attributes sits neatly in 1 job, job description
Don’t be discouraged by famous people who say they ALWAYS KNEW what their master career would be. I didn’t. Most people who love what they do, didn’t. People who are UBER passionate about their work today, didn’t.
Compelling careers often have complex origins
Think of Steve Jobs. That dude was passionate about his work. No question. Yet, Newport reminds us that Jobs was actually super passionate about Zen meditation and calligraphy in the 1970s. Jobs tells you to follow your passion – but honestly, it’s smarter to “do what Jobs did, not what he said.” Boom.
Amy Wrzesniewski (Yale professor) has done 20+ years of research on jobs vs. careers vs. calling, and her research suggests that it’s not the (mythical) perfect profession that creates meaning.
- Nope – people with the same job often have varying levels of “passion” for the work.
- Nope, it often has more to do with their level of mastery
- Folks who tend to be passionate about their work, are those who have the trifecta of competence, autonomy, and relatedness (think: self-determination theory)
Sensibly, if you are good at what you do (competence), have control and creativity over your work (autonomy), and feel connected (relatedness) . . sounds like a happy career to me. Note to self, all of those 3 things take time.
Passion is the side-effect of mastery
Mastery first.
For those who love This American Life podcast (who doesn’t, right?), Ira Glass says, “The key thing is to force yourself through the work, force the skills to come; that’s the hardest part.” Basically, get really good at something.
Then the passion grows.
If you have the “craftsman” mindset – pushing yourself to get better, geeking out on the intricacies of the work, investing time into your craft with deliberate practice – you will develop passion. Passion with a “Capital-Case P”.
Ergo, a more practical approach to early career success:
- Get rare and valuable skills
- Enjoy the journey of becoming a craftsman
- Evaluate options as they open up
Get career capital
When you start work, you have zero career capital. You are the new kid in school. You are a suspect. You’ve got to earn everyone’s respect, trust, and friendship. Yet, every time you deliver good work, fill in the gaps, work beyond your job description, you earn career capital that you can use later. Saving up coins in the career piggy bank.
When you get to this stage in your career S-curve, you can negotiate / leverage / move / shift your work to your advantage. With your competence, now you are getting more autonomy. Boom.
Gonna stop here. This just gets you through 1/5 of the book, pages 1-55. Here’s a talk he gave on the same topic.
Fairly big believer in this
Certainly, this is how it’s played out in my life. Love what I do, consider it a calling. Was this driven by a passion when I was 18 years old? Nope. When I was 18, I had no idea what consulting was. Could not imagine that I’d write, think, facilitate, persuade, teach, grade, coach, and ask questions for a living.
For me, this is wholesale encouraging. It’s okay that you don’t have drone-missile clarity on your calling.
However, it’s not okay to waste time (your most valuable resource) and not get good at something. Net/net: double down on yourself, your skills, your network, your point-of-view, your mastery, and your strategic positioning. As Seth Godin says, “real artists ship.” Time for you to ship your art.
What’s your point of view?
- Newport argues that passion (with a Capital-case P) is more of an output, than an input.
- Thoughts? What’s your story?
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I’ve not read this book, but I’ve ordered it. I appreciate your comments and can affirm that this is how it’s worked in my career as well. I love what I do although I hadn’t imagined it when I was 20. I am passing this philosophy on to my kids…perhaps the ultimate test of advice.